News

Patch Notes – v1.0.6.5.8046df9 (27th February 2018)

What’s New

Combat changes – batch #1

The biggest change we’ve made to this build is a complete rework of the Heat mechanics. We’ve redesigned the Heat bar and the way it gives feedback. We’ve also made the mechanics simpler and feel we’ve arrived at something that makes combat fun and accessible, whilst being measured and allowing the player to use a few tactics to get the most out it. Here are all the changes we’ve made:

Heat is no longer gained from forward thrust, it is now only applied when strafing and firing weapons (though we may add additional ways to gain heat in the future).

Heat is a value which goes up to 100, once you reach 100 your vessel will overheat.

The Heat bar warning light will turn on around 80% as an indication that you are close to overheating. There is also an audio cue.

Consequences like the temporary loss of a weapon whilst overheated have been removed.

When you are overheated you will be unable to strafe, though you can still turn, reverse and move forwards.

Once overheated you will remain in that state for a few seconds. After the overheated period has elapsed your locomotive will vent Heat rapidly and you’ll once again be able to strafe.

You can fire your weapons whilst overheated, but as a consequence you will take damage (10% of your max Hull value). When you choose to do this your locomotive will vent immediately and Heat will dissipate rapidly.

You will be unable to fire your weapons if you are overheated and firing them would damage your Hull to the extent that it would lead to your untimely demise.

Weapons now have continuous fire – hold down your hotkey/mouse button and the weapon will fire again as soon as it comes off its cooldown.

If you are using continuous fire then your weapons will cut out automatically when you become overheated so you don’t inadvertently damage your Hull. Once you come out of the overheated state continuous fire will kick in again.

Weapons have variable cooldown times and kick out different amounts of Heat (Jerusalem 30%, Emanation 50%, Brassraven 10%).

We’ve also made numerous changes to some of the beasties that roam the Reach. Cantankeri are a little faster, Reach Marauders can turn sharper and Enduring Dreadnaughts have new weapons and are a bit tougher. We’ve also made the agents less accurate, enemies like the Tacketies and Dreadnaughts will now take potshots at you even when they don’t have a perfect line of sight.

Controller Support

Gamepad support is finally here and currently works with Xbox One, Xbox 360 and PS4 controllers. Plug in a control pad and have fun navigating across the Reach using the bumper buttons to strafe and the triggers to control forward and backward thrust.

Unfortunately we didn’t have time to implement a login check to reset everyone’s default controls automatically to include the updated controller mapping, but we’ll be including it in the next update. For now if you want to take advantage of gamepad controls you’ll need to manually reset the controls to default. You can do this from the title screen (select Options > Controls > Restore Defaults) or in-game (press Esc > Options > Controls > Restore Defaults).

After many hours of gameplay we’ve added a default configuration which we feel is the best fit, however everyone is different so you can remap the gamepad controls at any time after having restored to the default configuration.

The gamepad controls introduced a lot of new functionality in order to be able to move through the various interfaces without using a mouse, so there are also keyboard equivalents in place, however these are not fully supported yet so you cannot rebind them at the moment, there is no functionality for the chart or moving between tabs in shops, and they are not currently shown in the Controls menu. They are as follows:

UI Submit (equivalent to X on Xbox controller, used for Jettison, More Info etc) – Delete

As simple as the gamepad controls look, it was a phenomenal amount of dev work to get it working correctly within Skies. Naturally there were lots of bugs and we’ve painstakingly nuked all but a bunch of minor issues which we’ll fix in an upcoming build. Make sure you read about them on our Known Issues[www.failbettergames.com] page so you are familiar. As always, if you come across any that aren’t listed then send us a quick report, details of how to do so are here[www.failbettergames.com]

Movement

We’ve made a couple of very subtle tweaks to locomotive movement. We’ve mentioned before in one of our Upcoming Changes threads that we are toying with the idea of having difficulty settings for movement. We won’t be implementing this until much closer to launch but in the meantime we wanted to adjust the controls to make the locomotives feel slightly less ‘slidey’. It’s been hard to find a balance because while a lot of players have told us they find the locomotive difficult to control, there’s also a lot of people who like the feel of it. One thing we don’t want to do is make the default controls feel ‘dumbed down’, hence why the changes we’ve made in this build are minor. Once difficulty settings are in place, you’ll be able to make stronger adjustments yourself. Here are the tweaks we’ve made:

We’ve increased forward thrust so you get up to your maximum speed quicker. This should make you nippier in combat when you need to kill forward thrust, make a sharp turn and move full steam ahead out of the way of incoming enemy fire.

In our last update we reduced the locomotive’s backward thrust so it’s much slower to reverse. We’ve buffed that a little in this build so it’s now a bit quicker.

We’ve tweaked the skid suppression which will give you a little more control when strafing.

Updates

Default controls for weapons have been changed to the mouse buttons – only new players installing the game for the first time will see this change. If you’ve been playing in Early Access and you want to see the changes you will need to restore defaults (from in game press Esc > Options > Controls > Restore Defaults).

The Survival HUD now flashes when you take Hull damage.

The Fastidious Inspector quest now requires items freely available throughout the Reach so players are no longer at the mercy of random Bargains.

When weapons are assigned to mouse buttons they no longer fire when opening/closing interfaces. We had to apply this change to hotkeys too, so be aware that if you choose to use keyboard hotkeys to fire your weapons, they will only work when your cursor is not over an interface.

Weapon keys can now be held down so that weapons fire immediately when they come off cooldown.

We’ve increased the size of projectiles

New ambient sounds are in place throughout the Reach.

We’ve added some functionality which stops you from going over the edge of the Reach and as a result players will no longer get stuck on the loading screen when crossing the boundary.

New in-game messages which trigger when you hit certain variable states have been introduced.

We’ve made some adjustments to the camera zoom.

The tutorial no longer opens up each time you close a Must Event or a Loot storylet.

Quests are now marked as completed once the storyline is finished.

Quests are now moved to the bottom of the journal when completed.

Objectives (sub-quests) are now in place and display as bullet pointed lists in the journal underneath the main quest. When completed they will be marked with a tick.